Eliminate fraud from Mobile money service – BoG

The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has charged telecom operators to develop systems aimed at eliminating fraud in the growing mobile money business. Various telecom companies have launched campaigns to reduce the close to 70% unbanked population in the country through this payment system.

According to the head of the national payment oversight office at the BoG Clarence Blay, the Telcos must develop robust infrastructure to deal with the emerging risk associated with the mode of payment.

Speaking at an MTN sponsored stakeholder conference under the theme “expanding cashless payments through mobile wallet transactions “, Mr. Blay stated that” we also want you to make your service affordable, we also want you to put in place systems to minimize or eliminate fraud if possible and we also want you to give wonderful customer service to your customers as they come to your premises to transact business. We want your system to have what it takes, to give very good audit trail of transactions”.

The Bank of Ghana also encouraged telcos to develop good business continuity plans to sustain people’s experiences with the system. “We don’t want the situation where people will be patronizing this thing and somewhere along there are hiccups here and there… We want a wonderful experience as people shift from cash to electronic payment”, he cautioned.

Meanwhile a seven year strategy to aggressively transform Ghana to a cashless society is expected to be launched by the Bank of Ghana today. The national payment system development strategy is expected to transition the over 70% unbanked adult population to adopt the various modes of payment in their daily activities.

The recently suspended 17.5% VAT on some financial services has been identified as one of many government initiatives that discourage banking.

Also speaking at the stakeholder conference was the sales and distribution executive for MTN Eric Nsarko, who said the current regulations of the Bank of Ghana limit the influence of the mobile telecom operators who are promoting the service.

According to Eric Nsarko the Telcos are expectant of plans to revise the existing regulations by the BoG and called for incentives that will rope in the huge unbanked population.

MTN Ghana first introduced the Mobile cash management service unto the Ghanaian market five years. It current has experienced rapid growth in operation with over one million active customers on the network and over 6.5 million transactions on a monthly basis.